Cade Burns
Another shipment came in tomorrow, and my men were antsy about it after the meeting we’d had the day prior.
It wasn’t that I’d killed one of the men responsible for overseeing the shipment. It wasn’t even that I had come unhinged time and time again when Aria was mentioned.
They were concerned about the threat of the Italians coming and ruining our deal.
We’d seen a severe uptick in Italian spies and attackers recently, and now that my men knew the reason behind it, they were rightfully worried. None of them wanted to be caught in an attack, so they took all the necessary precautions and then some.
I needed to figure out where to go from here, but the options were endless, and none of them were preferable. There was only one plan that had the potential to work out well, and even that one was risky.
Aria, the exact person I needed to speak to, strolled into the room, her eyes looking both wary and distracted. I imagined my suggestion would make that wariness increase, so I stood and approached her, deciding it would be best to soften the blow with some distraction. “I know what needs to be done,” I told her. “You’re not going to like it.”
“Yeah?” she asked, only half paying attention. I guided her toward the loveseat and allowed her to sit as I took the seat beside her.
“If you go before the Commission and declare that you are joining my ranks to keep my people and me from interfering with Irish business dealings, they may give you support and leave us be,” I told her. “Say that we’re breaking all alliances with the Italians and working separately from them.”
She shook her head. “It won’t work until the alliance is broken.”
“I’m aware.”
She only shrugged, and I furrowed my brows.
“Are you going to offer any insight?”
When she didn’t reply, I looked at the deep lines set on her face-the worry and concern that she had regarding this entire situation. I knew that this was causing her stress-enough that she didn’t even bother critiquing my shoddy plan. We could discuss it later, I decided. We could make a game plan and decide what to do after I took care of those worry lines on her face.
Instead of pushing her to think about this, I grabbed both sides of her face and forced her to look at me. “I think we could both stand to take our minds off of this situation.”
She shook her head, but before she could say anything, I slammed my lips onto hers. She gasped, straightening and sucking in a breath through her nose as she slowly melted against me. She moved her lips against mine, and I moved my hands down her body until they gripped her hips. I tightened my grasp and lifted her, taking a seat and placing her atop me.
Aria smiled against my lips, pulling away at once and examining my entire face. That smile quickly faded. “We need to talk about-”
I cut her off again. I grabbed the nape of her neck and jerked her face forward until her lips met mine again. I moved a hand between us, trailing it up her smooth abdomen and toward her breasts. When I didn’t find a bra, I smiled wickedly against her lips as I massaged both of her breasts, kneading her nipples between my fingers in a way that had her gasping and grinding into me.
Some of the lines on her face loosened as she moved against me. That stress faded as I touched her and made her feel the same arousal that I got from simply looking at her for too long.
She broke away for a second, shaking her head as if to remind herself of why she was here, and I moved one of my hands between her thighs slowly, massaging her through her pants there. “We need-” she stopped and gasped. “We need to talk about Matteo.”
I clenched my jaw, shifting and lifting her. I pressed her down on the couch beneath us and hovered above her, entirely the predator. “I don’t want to hear another man’s name on your lips right now,” I growled, jerking her pants from her body.
“We need to have a conversation,” she said adamantly, but I didn’t give her the chance to continue as I dropped to my knees before her, spreading her thighs and placing my head between them.
“Is talking really something you want to do right now?” I asked a mere second before plunging myself between her thighs and feasting.
She cried out, unable to say anything more as I devoured her, making sure to hit all the spots I knew she most needed. My tongue swept across all the dips and crevices of her, taking in her sweet taste as I dug my fingers into her thighs and pulled her closer. It was a sweet ecstasy on my tongue- a song in my blood as I moved my tongue inside of her and brought forth the most delectable sounds.
She deserved a distraction after everything.
She deserved to have one evening where she didn’t need to worry about all the consequences of our union. I only wanted her to think about us right now-not all the things that could go wrong.
“God,” she cried out, tensing around my tongue and shaking. “Oh, my
God.”
I continued exactly what I was doing until her shuttering faded into occasional spasms. When I pulled away, I went immediately for her lips, hovering over her and allowing her to taste herself. I could tell that I’d brought her mind far from the place it had been lingering before as she moved both arms around my neck and pulled me closer.
That was all I needed. I needed her to show that she genuinely wanted this-wanted me. “You’re persistent,” she whispered against my lips as I grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head.
“When it comes to you, that will never change.”
Something flashed in her eyes, and she began pulling away again, but I grabbed the back of her head and slammed my lips back into hers, feeling as she writhed beneath me. “This is important,” she said against my lips.
“Not as important as what we’re doing right now.” I pulled away just long enough to take off my own shirt and toss it behind me. “How about this? If you can last five minutes without coming, we can talk about this right now. If not, I want you to focus on us.”
She shook her head. “I want to do this, but we need to talk first.”
I smirked and shook my head. “Are you saying you don’t want me to fuck you right now?” I asked, and her breath caught as I came above her. I gripped her chin between my fingers and lifted her head until she had no choice but to look directly at me. “Because your body is saying something different.”
Her chest rose and fell rapidly as her eyes moved around the room, struggling to focus on me. She wanted this. I could feel it with every fiber of my being, but she was determined to have a conversation first.
I wasn’t.
“It isn’t a request,” I finally told her, winding my hand in her thick tangles of hair and tugging her head backward. I moved my other hand between her thighs and pressed my thumb down, causing her to jerk from my touch. “I’m going to fuck you because I know you’re going to like it.”
Her eyes flashed with a challenge. “How do you know?”
I lowered my face to hers. “Princess, I’m a mafia boss. There are two things I can do well. Kill and fuck, and I promise you that killing is the last thing on my mind right now.”
She gasped and pressed herself more firmly into my hand. “You haven’t done much to prove it to me recently.”
Oh, she was feeling extra cheeky. I stepped back and whipped my belt from my pants, moving the latch in my hands until it created a makeshift restraint. Aria’s eyes moved from the belt to my eyes a few times before she leaned into the couch. I gripped her wrists and latched them in my belt, pulling it tight enough that she gasped.
“I haven’t?” I asked, pulling myself free from my pants with one hand and shoving her arms above her head with the other. I didn’t hesitate before plunging into her, and she cried out, jerking against where I had her wrists pinned above her head. “I guess I’m going to have to remedy that situation.”
She bit her bottom lip and defiantly lifted her hips into mine, taking me deeper into her and shuttering, releasing a long moan that had my chest filling with satisfaction. Aria looked like a goddess before me. Her dark hair knotted atop her head, and the green of her eyes rolled back into her head as I took my time with her. Each of my thrusts had her trembling and moaning. The sweet taste of her still coated the back of my throat, and heat swept up my body as I recalled her reaction to that, too.
I bent down, hovering my face over hers. “Come for me, Aria,” I growled.
Almost as if my words opened a floodgate within her, she went ridged, and her moans grew louder and more intense. She shook and screamed as I kept up the steady pace that brought me closer and closer to that line.
All it took was my name cascading through her lips to bring me over that edge right behind her.
When I finished, I sat above her, still holding her in place as she breathed heavily, the stress lines across her forehead finally faded. I knew that my stress had been cut in half just from this, and as I stared at where she lay beneath me, I couldn’t imagine ever caring about another thing as much as I cared about her.
“Is the thing you wanted to discuss as important now?” I asked.
Her eyes flashed confusion for just a moment before they widened, and she closed them. She writhed beneath me, and I moved, allowing her to slip her wrists through my belt loop. She rubbed them and looked between me and the belt. “We’re doing that again,” she said, not an ounce of uncertainty in her voice.
“I planned on it.”
“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath and pulling a decorative blanket from the back of my couch over herself. I wanted to curse Elizabeth for decorating with it when we could have had this conversation completely nude. “I have to make it right,” she whispered, shaking her head. She wouldn’t even look me in the eyes, and I wondered what switch had flipped inside of her in the seconds it took for me to stand and for her to cover herself.
“You have to make what right?” I asked.
She took a deep breath. “I can’t let Matteo come after you.”
“You aren’t letting him do anything,” I told her. “You’re not in control of your brother or his actions.”
“But I am,” she said, and I froze. “To an extent, I am. I came here as a spy, Cade. That was the reason he sent me, and I had no problem doing it for a long time, but I-I’m not doing it anymore. The alliance was never real to him, and he’s planned on taking you out from the start. Now that he knows I’m not on his side, he’s going to attack.”
She continued speaking, but her words fell on deaf ears as she admitted to being a spy. A spy. I immediately assessed all the things she’d seen-all the things we’d said around her. There had been so many. The things she knew could take down this entire place.
“What did you tell him?” I asked, cutting off her explanation.
“Cade, I hated you, and you hated me. I stopped the moment I learned who you truly were beneath all the shit I thought I’d seen. I-”
I stepped forward and grabbed her chin roughly. “What the fuck did you tell him?”
“Nothing,” she cried, a tear streaming down her face. “I could never bring myself to give him good information. I swear.”
But I didn’t believe her.
I couldn’t believe her after admitting that she’d been a spy. She’d done such a good job, too. I knew that she hated me at first, but I never got the impression that she was trying to learn about us. I never thought that she was more than a pawn for her brother.
She’d played me like a fucking fool.
I didn’t let her say anything more as I turned and strode from the room.
This changed everything.